Re: PostgreSQL inheritance vs https://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/Don%27t_Do_This

Achilleas Mantzios <a.mantzios@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> · Wed, 8 Nov 2023 08:31:17 +0200



    Hello All
    

    Here is the presentation, it was done
      under "Percona University Athens". It went ok, I think, although
      people didn't seem to understand much, as the audience was
      MySQL/PostgreSQL/Mongo/Oracle mix. However some young people
      seemed to be interested as they asked questions afterwards.

    
    https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/15LmNmjSMAXzHDSlm0MgvHuhSPnmVijsytdPJOz3l13g/edit?usp=sharing

    
    It was an interesting event, I had the
      chance to speak to top MySQL hackers (including the founders of
      Percona, TiDB, FerretDB). The event was relatively friendly to
      PostgreSQL as well, I have to say. PostgreSQL was presented as
      catching up MySQL in terms of usage/growth.
    

    In some future similar events I'd love
      to prepare a better and more current presentation for the local
      Greek community!

    
    Στις 23/10/23 14:45, ο/η Achilleas
      Mantzios - cloud έγραψε:

    
      Hello All
      in the wiki above and specifically in this commit : 

      
      https://wiki.postgresql.org/index.php?title=Don%27t_Do_This&type=revision&diff=33210&oldid=33082
      someone added this section about inheritance : 

      
      "
      Don't
          use table inheritance
      Don't use table inheritance. If you think you
        want to, use foreign keys instead. 
      Why not?
      Table inheritance was a part of a fad wherein the database was
        closely coupled to object-oriented code. It turned out that
        coupling things that closely didn't actually produce the desired
        results. 
      When should you?
      Never …almost. Now that table partitioning is done natively,
        that common use case for table inheritance has been replaced by
        a native feature that handles tuple routing, etc., without
        bespoke code. 
      One of the very few exceptions would be temporal_tables extension if you
        are in a pinch and want to use that for row versioning in place
        of a lacking SQL 2011 support. Table inheritance will provide a
        small shortcut instead of using UNION ALL to get
        both historical as well as current rows. Even then you ought to
        be wary of caveats while working with parent
        table. 
      "
      

      I believe this text is false on too many accounts. So, what's
        the consensus about Inheritance in PostgreSQL, I am going to
        give a talk on it in November and I wouldn't like to
        advertise/promote/teach something that the community has decided
        to abandon or drop. Actually I proposed several topics and they
        chose this one (Inheritance). 

      
    -- 
Achilleas Mantzios
 IT DEV - HEAD
 IT DEPT
 Dynacom Tankers Mgmt